KLM’s social media strategy – Part 3

Part 3 : Campaigns

KLM has been active in social media since late 2009. Ever since, people have been asking us about our social media strategy. In this third part of our blog series about it, we look back at some of our campaigns.

Over the past three years, we launched a number of social campaigns – some big, some small, like “Personal Space”, “Dream Destinations” and our “Latino” campaign. One of our earliest campaigns that I really enjoyed was “KLM Fans”, in which we invited talented filmmakers to promote our Facebook page.

Our best-known campaign would have to be “KLM Surprise”, where a team gave away small gifts to passengers who checked in using Foursquare or Twitter. Other large campaigns included our mile-high dance party “Fly2Miami”, after we lost a bet on Twitter with the Dutch dance scene. One ambitious campaign was “#LiveReply” on YouTube. It took almost 500 volunteers to realise. My personal favourite was “Tile & Inspire”, which brought our Dutch heritage, social media, brand ambassadors, gamification, and our best hardware — planes — together. Even supermodel Doutzen Kroes and DJ Armin van Buuren participated! More recently, the much-debated introduction of “Meet & Seat” had CNN’s Richard Quest fascinated.

Not that campaigns always need to be global and spectacular. Many of our establishments have successfully launched their local pages, and we’ve learned that the power often lies in simplicity — like showing the interior of a cockpit, or thanking someone for notifying us about broken lighting on our KLM sign. Our creative editorial board delivers a daily dose of captivating, engaging posts through our various channels.

Social campaigns have won us several awards, but it hasn’t been one success after the next. We’ve certainly had our share of bloopers. But rather than hushing them up, we decided to make them public and take them as a learning experience. And as it turned out, people liked us even more for it.